Another similarity to Jane Eyre lies in the use of aspects of her own life as inspiration for fictional events, in particular her reworking of the time she spent at the pensionnat in Brussels. Tracking key words such as ‘passion’ and ‘plain’ across many languages via interactive visualisations and comparative analysis, Prismatic Jane Eyre opens a wholly new perspective on Brontë’s novel, and provides a model for the collaborative close-reading of world literature. Villette marked Bront's return to writing from a first-person perspective (that of Lucy Snowe), the technique she had used in Jane Eyre. Above all, the co-authors read the translations and the English text closely, and together, showing in detail how the novel’s feminist power, its political complexities and its romantic appeal play out differently in different contexts and in the varied styles and idioms of individual translators. Co-written by many scholars, Prismatic Jane Eyre traces the receptions of the novel across cultures, showing why, when and where it has been translated (and no less significantly, not translated – as in Swahili), and considering the role of publishers through an exploration of changes in titles and cover images.
Prismatic Jane Eyre develops the theoretical ramifications of this idea, and reads Brontë’s novel in the light of them: together, the English text and the many translations form one vast entity, a multilingual world-work, spanning many times and places, from Cuba in 1850 to 21st-century China from Calcutta to Bologna, Argentina to Iran.
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